Rubicon: Church and State

I still really need someone to explain to me how he got the motorcycle up into his apartment.

“I keep a close watch on this heart of mine

I keep my eyes wide open all the time

I keep the ends out for the tie that binds

Because you’re mine

I walk the line”

-Johnny Cash, “I Walk the Line”

Someone’s tailing Will, and doesn’t seem to be too concerned that Will has noticed. As Will makes his way to the API office, which appears to be right at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, a very conspicuous dude in a trench coat practically holds Will’s hand down the street. Will is making his way to API to escort Mrs. David so that she can go through David’s things. Apparently, this is her first visit up to the office, as David took great care to keep his personal and professional lives separate. “Church and state,” is how he used to describe it to his wife, but she wasn’t sure if she was the church or the state. After that moment of Big Insight, she notes that there’s nothing in David’s office that reminds her of her husband, and Will has a sad.

As she leaves, Mrs. David tells Will that his brother-in-law, Evan, is coming into town and specifically wanted to visit with Will. Which comes as a shock as this Evan character never liked Will. Also, there are some hints that Evan is crazy, so. But Will agrees to see him because he’s a Nice Guy. When Will heads back to the API offices, he notices The World’s Most Noticeable Tail again, and has the security guy inside focus a camera on him for a while, because why not.

Did I mention that Maggie has a little girl? Because I totally meant to. Anyway, Maggie has a little girl and the two of them are out for a walk and discussing fish hibernation and eyelids when Bearded Hipster Dude walks up and the little girl is all “YAY, DADDY!” but Maggie looks like someone who just realized she ate a bad tuna fish sandwich.

Ms. Rhumor has been spending her time lying in bed staring at old photos of her dead husband and taking phone calls from Sledge Hammer who wants to take her out to dinner while his wife is out of town. Someone should give Mrs. Sledge Hammer the heads up out on Fishers Island that her husband is busy consoling hot widows.

At the team meeting, Miles explains that the German intelligence agency, BND (or Bundesnachrichtendienst — you can see why they abbreviate it), isn’t being exactly cooperative in handing over information that they might have o this George Boeck fellow in the picture with Yuri Popovich. Fortunately, our girl MacGuffin MacGaffin is competent, and managed to learn that Boeck is actually Nassir Malamamoud (sp?), a half-German, half-Syrian moderate Muslim banker who changed his name in college. Miles makes some whiny noises about how their area of expertise is the Middle East, and that this case should be given to the Eastern European team, but I beg to differ? Because one of the things that Boeck’s bank seems to do is provide financial services to the Middle East, so, uh, yeah, maybe you should be working on it. ANYWAY. They still don’t know who the third dude is in the picture. Will sighs heavily.

Will has to now explain to the ever-creepy Kale that he needs more time to analyze the photo, and Kale is all, Yeah, so this was all a test by Spangler? And you totally failed. Way to go, loser. But then Kale agrees to poke BND and see if they won’t be more cooperative.

Will’s meeting with Evan starts off all awkward hugs and smiles and chit chat about Evan’s time in the loony bin (where his father didn’t come to visit him ~single solitary tear~), but quickly leads to with Evan demanding that Will give him the motorcycle that David gave him for his birthday. After all, David was Evan’s father, not Will’s. NYAH. Will, understandably, is peeved. DADDY ISSUES.

At the API offices, Grant and MacGaffin speculate on why Malamamoud took the name George — after all, he’s German, so why not Heinrich or Fritz? As Miles goes to “call Berlin,” MacGaffin gives Grant a hard time for being named for one of the worst presidents in history, because Ulysses S. Grant? Come on. But Grant and Mr. T disagree with this notion of Ulysses S.Grant being one of the worst presidents ever, but MacGaffin and I think they are both confusing his military career with his political one, even if she doesn’t say that out loud. And Miles? Is actually busy calling his wife from whom he is separated. Or divorced. It’s unclear. But she’s not in Berlin. That much is clear. Or at least pretty clear. Oh, who knows. Maybe she’s in Berlin, too. All I’m saying is that they don’t say where she is, so we can’t write off the notion that she’s in Berlin, even though she totally is not.

Will decides to take the motorcycle apart in his living room (again, how’d he get that up there? Motorcycles ain’t light.) in a fit of pique, determined that David must have left him some kind of clue therein, and only after spending the entire night doing so does he notice the duct tape on the seat after finding a picture of Evan and David and the bike. RLY? Anywho, David apparently wrote some sort of elaborate code on the sticky side of the tape, and stuffed a gun inside the seat. Fond of codes, that one.

Miles has tracked down some airport security footage of Boeck and his daughter, and though nothing particularly of note happens in it, Miles seems obsessed. Will swings by his office to ask him what a 10-digit number could represent in a code, and Miles runs over some options including phone numbers, isbns and people, based on the fact that with 7 billion people running around, if you assigned each of them a number, it would have to be 10 digits long. Interesting.

On his way home, Will notices that he’s being tailed again, and this time decides to just stop and be like, Dude. Why you buggin’? In response, Tailie punches Will in the gut and then runs away.

Back at API the next day, Miles reveals what he’s learned about this Boeck guy: not much. He likes to travel, takes a lot of cruises. Miles then agrees that Ulysses S. Grant was one of the worst presidents, because, come on. That guy. Sheesh.

Will visits Ed Bancroft with the tape and tells him about Evan wanting the motorcycle and Bancroft is like, you should totally give him the motorcycle. But then Will starts in on the whole, Do you think David knew he was gonna die? business, and Bancroft is all, He totally knew he was going to be murdered, yes.

Oh, hey, remember how Ms. Rhumor was going to have dinner with Sledge Hammer? Yeah, that happens. Sledge Hammer promises that he didn’t know about the townhouse, and then makes some noise about true friendship and forgiveness. And then after dinner, he totally breaks into the townhouse and pokes around, picking up a picture of seven boys at the beach which he slips under his jacket before leaving. Whoza?

Miles is still watching that airport security footage, which makes him call his wife again and announce, Good news! They’re going on a cruise! And Mrs. Miles is all, Uh, no we’re not. P.S., you can’t see your kids or me next weekend, KBAI.

Will comes home to find Evan waiting for him on the stoop, looking for his motorcycle. Will is all HEAVY SIGH. FINE. And brings Evan inside to show him the completely disassembled bike. Sorree? Anyway, as the two of them put the motorcycle back together, Evan manages to awkwardly mention that the only real conversations that he had with his father were about baseball, and Will is all ZOMGEUREKAPONIES.

And heads directly upstate — or is it Connecticut? Seeing as Putnam, CT is north of Providence, RI, this too seems unlikely. WHATEVER. He goes upstate to see Bancroft with this baseball idea and explains that David knew that Will hated the Yankees (join the crowd) and, sure enough, 27 of the lines of code correspond to Yankee World Series wins. Then? Bancroft manages to figure out that another line? Corresponds to some old timey baseball player who had an improbable career, playing only one game during the 1912 Detroit Tigers strike. This particular player had never pitched a baseball before, but was pulled into the game in a moment of desperation, and went on to allow 26 runs (not a MLB run record, contrary to popular belief — just an earned run MLB record. Oh, God. Now I sound like the insufferable fantasy baseball-obsessed Mr. T. Gah.) and unsurprisingly, lost the game. His name? Allan Travers. HEY. THAT’S WILLS LAST NAME! Bancroft is all, Yes, that’s right, super genius. He put your name into the code so that you’d know when you broke it.

Back to that George Boeck character: he’s a really good guy who rented an apartment for his sick sister in London. And Miles can find nothing wrong with him. Not one thing. And it’s starting to freak Miles out. In other news, BND is being cooperative, though they keep asking API what they have on Boeck, because, yeah.

Kreepy Kale introduces Will to the man who punched him in the gut a few days earlier, and explains that Tailie is a fed who was assigned to follow Will as part of the vetting process for his new security clearance. O HAI! Tailie warns Will not to confront people who are following him, which, good advice? I guess?

Outside on the street, Will calls someone the Rubicon site identifies as Daniel Burns, but I have no idea who this Daniel Burns guy is. Will and asks this mystery man to run some names for him — seven to be exact (any connection to those seven boys in the picture that Seldge Hammer purloins? And could the other four be: Truxton Spangler, Tom Rhumor, Seldge Hammer and RC), though we only hear three of them: Jeffrey Garcia, Alfred Bermedez, and Randy Hobbs. O? Hobbs? Rly? All the while, Will keeps an eye on the man dancing around in the shadows nearby, desperate to be noticed. Will then goes upstairs and puts a round into his new gun.

Obvious Tail, Part the Second goes into a laundromat where he tells another man that Will saw him. Other Guy is all HEAVY SIGH. Obvious Tail, Part the Second can report that the FBI has stopped following Will and that Will visited Bancroft again last night. So Other Guy calls someone and tells them that Will is still digging. Guess Will gets himself a new tail soon. Can’t wait to meet Obvious Tail 33 1/3, The Final Insult!

Not a terrible lot to say about this episode. I have spent entirely too much time googling “baseball” and “codes” and “spies” and “CIA” in various combinations, and have come up with bupkiss. Someone out there a much better scholar of cipher history (which wouldn’t be hard) care to add anything? I will note that it it’s not entirely surprising that a code maker with a luck fetish would be enamored with baseball, what with its impenetrable statistics, wholly separate language, complicated rules and the players’ entrenched superstitions. Also, baseball is yet another game referenced on the show, so add it to our growing list which includes chess, video games, hide and seek and crossword puzzles. As noted before, games represent duality, conflict, opposition. What I neglected to mention was that games often also abide by a certain set of rules. Not unlike codes. The question is, what are the rules that this shady group is playing by? Or are they playing by any rules at all?

The episode also made interesting use of surveillance cameras and television sets. Will has the security guard turn his camera on the man trailing — and watching — him. It becomes a closed loop of mutual observation. What’s interesting is that the episode then returns again and again to Miles watching that security camera footage of George Boeck and his family. On the one hand, this helps develop Miles’ character, fleshing out his back story with his own family drama. Which I certainly appreciate — character development is always welcome. But I wonder if the focus on Miles observing Boeck on the security footage doesn’t tie back to Will observing his tail on the security camera, meaning, what if Boeck (or Popovich or the mystery third man) is also keeping tabs on API, or someone affiliated with it? Another closed loop of observation? Who is watching whom?

And speaking of Boeck, this name-changing business is interesting, and plays into the sense on this show that no one is who they appear to be. The episode begins with David’s widow noting that his office is foreign to her, that it doesn’t bear any resemblance to the man she knew. David clearly had some great secret that Will is in the process of revealing, but underlying that is the fact that David isn’t the person that those who were closest to him knew him to be. Tom’s widow, like David’s, is also dealing with the realization that her husband had a completely separate life that she knew nothing about. Miles and Maggie appear to be hiding the truth of their own lives from their friends and co-workers, when they (or at least just Maggie) aren’t spying on them. And Will has his own secret pursuit, uncovering the truth of this conspiracy, which he is keeping form those around him. They all split themselves, as David did, between church and state.

But I, like Grant, am interested in Why George? Why would Malamamoud choose a German surname, but go with an anglicized first name? George is a popular name among English monarchs, including one against whom our young nation revolted. And there’s George Washington, and the Georges Bush, there’s a Syrian singer named George, and Curious George. Hard to say. I keep coming back to Saint George, but that’s because I’m obsessed with saints. I suppose the actual point is that Boeck is himself a cipher, and doesn’t allow himself to be identified so easily, not even to be pinned to a single nationality. He is German, but not. He is Syrian, but not. His life is right there on the page, but they know nothing about him. Not really.

Still, I keep coming back to Saint George, the dragon killer. According to the always reliable Wikipedia, St. George was born in the Middle East (Syria Palaestina, to be exact) during the late third century, and became a soldier. Saint George is the patron saint of England, along with a number of other countries, including Russia. In fact, you supposedly can find more statues of St. George slaying the dragon in Moscow than in any other city. And that story that he is famous for — killing that dragon — is assumed to be an anglicized version of an ancient Mesopotamian folktale. St. George and his fable both came from the Middle East but became anglicized. Interestingly, there is another George with whom he is sometimes confused, who was the archbishop of Alexandria in the fourth century, but who first made his fortune as an arms-dealer and then a tax collector. Despite being a man of a cloth, this George was an all-around bad guy who was a tyrant to Christians and non-Christians alike. I’m sure all of this is a hill of beans, but then again, upon rewatching the episode, I noticed something curious; Miles in his frustration at not finding anything on George Boeck exclaims, “Will, this guy is a saint.” Hmm.

There were a couple of other minor notes that I feel like we should talk about; again, I’m not entirely sure that they mean anything, but, why not, right? Maggie mentions hibernation twice in the episode, in relation to fish and bears. And while I’m sure it’s probably nothing, I wonder if it isn’t a subtle clue about this group, this beast awakening. Tom’s death appears to be the beginning of something, but what? What are they coming out of hibernation to do? Why are they waking up now?

Finally, I couldn’t help but notice the horse statuette that they show in Will’s office twice in this episode. (And right here is where I wish I had the benefit of the screen captures that I had for Lost. Sigh. WHERE ARE YOU, CRAZED FANS? I NEED YOUR HELP RIGHT ABOUT NOW.) Trust me. Will has a horse statuette in his office and they gave it visual prominence twice in this episode. Right. So. David had a similar little statuette on his desk — an owl — which Will specifically requested to keep. Owls represent wisdom and rational knowledge, and is a harbinger of death. As such, that little owl serves as a nice totem for David. So is Will’s totem a horse? If so, what does that mean? Horse symbolism is complicated. Depending largely on the color of the animal, a horse can either be a solar symbol of noble power, or the representation of death and the underworld (think: Four Horses of the Apocalypse). A horse can be frustratingly ambiguous in part because of the nature between the animal and rider. The rider must control the horse, but, at the same time, is dependent upon the animal’s will and character. It’s a give and take. Thus the light and dark imagery associated with horses. In this instance, I believe the horse represents Will’s quest, his dangerous journey to uncover the truth. Interestingly, my favorite symbolism book, The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols notes this about horse symbolism (pg. 526):

Horses and serpents often play interchangeable roles as the heroes of many a wonder-tale. Or else they are combined to create a weird monster, a cross between horse and snake. This is Long-Ma, the Chinese “horse-dragon” … In countless Chinese legends, from the Li-sao of Chu-yuan to the Si-yu Chi, horses take the place of dragons. In both cases they take part in the quest for knowledge …

The frequent presence of horses in Shintō temples in Japan, either alive or in the shape of statues, has never been satisfactorily explained. They would seem to have been the steeds of the kami, but in Japan horses are also associated with notions of protection and longevity, as is also the case with the Chinese ‘horse-dragon.’

Instead of combining into a single mythic figure, the conjunction of horse and dragon can also split into component parts. Each takes on an opposing quality and they meet in mortal combat, which becomes a battle of good and evil. Clearly the horse is given a positive value, since it represents the humanized facet of the symbol, while the dragon stands for the beast-in-us, which must be killed, in other words rejected. The myth of St. George and the Dragon is an instance of this.

So, is George really a saint? Or is he a dragon? And if Will is our horseman, what are his dragons?